


You're Hot Then You're Cold

by anonymous_yet_again



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: ('cuddling' on its own is not a tag?), (at least a bit), AU at the end of season 6, Case Fic, Cuddling & Snuggling, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Sickfic, Surprisingly Little Angst, canon-typical descriptions of murder and stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26197537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_yet_again/pseuds/anonymous_yet_again
Summary: Things you will encounter in this story include: flashbacks, fake visions, dead bodies of the human and porcine variety, cocaine, at least one bad guy, and some cuddling.  Weaving throughout it all are a grumpy head detective and a ridiculous fake psychic, who figure out a few things about the case, and a few more about each other._____Alternate summary reads as follows:me: i want to write a story about lassie’s fear of snowglobesalso me: i want to write a shassie story set post-shules and post-carlowe so I can write out all my feelings about the characters’ varied relationshipsalso also me: there should be gentle hurt/comfort and cuddlingnobody:also also also me: you’re right, let’s put it all together and make it a case fic besides.Updates 2-3 times a week!
Relationships: Carlton Lassiter/Shawn Spencer
Comments: 69
Kudos: 122





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, I have now seen the entirety of the show _Psych_ and I have many feelings but only an AO3 account, so they need to be excised in the form of fic and author’s notes. This is set late season 6, which will probably become clear based on things the characters reference (and things they don’t). (Also means that "Present day" in the text actually means ~2012.)
> 
> Also I have _not_ seen either of the movies yet so any relevant character background revealed in those is...pretty much ignored in this story.

**1982**

Carlton Lassiter planted himself in the doorway and refused to move. “You can’t go to work,” he said. “Lulu needs her mother.”

“Booker, you’re being ridiculous,” blared his mother. “Get out of the way. Someone needs to earn money for this family.”

“This _family_ is just three people who don’t even spend time together!” Carlton spat back, not moving. Lulu had crept halfway downstairs, and was peering at the argument over the bannister. Carlton didn’t want to scare her. He just wanted what was _best_ for her, which was _not_ her mother going off to work every weekend, even during the Christmas break when families were supposed to be spending _time_ together. “You won’t even take us to Old Sonora, or--or _anything_ ,” he added bitterly, getting to the root of his argument. Lately, his mother had started saying he was too old for going to the Old West town every weekend.

“Booker, I expect better from you,” said Mother, “you’re the man of the house now.”

“I’m _fourteen_ ,” said Carlton. The reminder of his dad’s absence--continued absence, really--kind of made him want to cry, and he didn’t want to cry in front of Lulu _or_ his mother. He wavered, and Mother took advantage of his internal struggle to move him aside and pull the door open.

“ _No_ ,” said Carlton, pushing past her again and stopping at the front steps. It was cold outside, almost a record-breaking cold this year, and the sky was white with lowering clouds. “Just--take a weekend off. It’s almost Christmas.” He bit back the “please” he’d been about to add. He _was_ the man of the house, after all.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said his mother again, and tried to push past him. He grabbed the top of the stair railings, and held on. Mother said, “ _Booker_ ,” shoving at his arm, and when he didn’t move, she pulled back her hand and slapped him across the face. Carlton let go of the railing to grab at his cheek; the combination of movements upset his balance, and he stumbled backwards down the three stairs and ended up sitting on the cold front walk, stunned.

Lulu had made it to the doorway, where she was shivering, staring, and starting to cry. Carlton wanted to go to her. Then he looked at his mother, who was white-faced but dry-eyed. She’d never hit him like that before. “Booker--” she started.

“I hate you,” said Carlton. He got up, turned, and ran. His legs were long, and he’d been working out lately, hoping to join the wrestling team. He ignored the cold and his mother’s calls easily--ignoring Lulu’s wails was a little harder--and took a shortcut he knew towards the highway. If Mother wouldn’t drive him to Old Sonora, he’d hitchhike there. Without him home, she’d have to stay and look after Lulu, so it would be better for them both. It was simple.

**Present day**

“Carlton,” said O’Hara, putting a hand on his forehead, “should you even be here? You feel a little warm.”

He jerked his head out from under her hand and glared. All right, so maybe he did have a headache, but it was probably just because he hadn’t slept very well. And, OK, maybe he hadn’t slept well because every time he’d laid down, snot would pool in the back of his throat, and make him cough. But she didn’t have to go around babying him. “Just because you broke up with Spencer doesn’t make me your replacement man-child,” he snapped.

O’Hara’s concerned, friendly expression shuttered, and she turned away. Carlton felt bad immediately, but he didn’t want to invite her back to keep fussing over him. She and Spencer had broken up almost a month ago, now, but it was still a touchy subject. Not because they were antagonistic or anything; in fact, compared to the way they’d acted right before the break up, they were pretty friendly now. Carlton wasn’t an expert on human relationships--actually he tended to be terrible at reading them--but he had paid a lot of attention to this one, and he suspected that any remaining tension was because both Spencer and O’Hara still were fond of each other, and wished that they were more compatible than they were, but knew they’d start fighting again if they got back together. He opened his mouth to apologize, then changed his mind and blew his nose on his handkerchief instead. She’d get over it.

“Detectives,” said Chief Vick from her office door, still a little hoarse but better than she’d sounded eight days ago. That was maybe the other reason O’Hara suspected he had a cold; the chief had brought something in from Iris’s daycare or wherever she communed with other little cesspools of germs disguised as human children, and that something had been going around the station for the past week. Carlton suppressed a sneeze and followed O’Hara over. “A body was just found in Mission Creek,” the chief said, passing them a folder that so far only had one sheet of paper in it, with a few scrawled lines from a phone message. “The people who spotted it pulled it up to the bank, but it sounds like they left it alone otherwise. Forensics should be there already.”

“On our way,” said Carlton, letting O’Hara take the folder. He spun to leave, and was confronted with the sight of Spencer and Guster arguing their way into the station. He groaned. Though it would take a life or death situation for him to admit it, he didn’t actually mind their presence anymore, most of the time. He’d even kind of missed them during the week or so after Spencer and O’Hara had broken up. But dealing with them both--mostly Spencer--took a certain level of energy that Carlton just wasn’t sure he could muster at the moment.

“Ooh, new case?” said Spencer, eying the thin folder in O’Hara’s hands. “Great, we were just discussing how we need a new case to help Gus pay his credit card bill--”

“--to help _you_ pay my credit card bill, you overdrafted my account trying to buy an ostrich,” said Guster.

“--so we can just come with you to this crime scene and prove we’re needed!” Spencer continued as though there had been no interruption.

“No,” said Carlton. Spencer glanced at him from under his eyebrows, almost a concerned glance. “Go back to your ostrich.”

“You weren’t listening, Lassie, I didn’t actually succeed in buying one,” said Spencer. “Which is probably a good thing, it might have been too tall for the Psych office’s ceilings. Though we did put a polar bear there, once.”

“Mr. Spencer--” called Guster, more focused on their goal.

Henry Spencer looked over from his desk. “If you can find anything at the crime scene that they can’t,” he said, “you can have the case. Otherwise you’ll need to find a different way to pay off your ostrich.”

“ _No one_ is listening, I didn’t actually _buy_ the ostrich,” complained Spencer, already headed back out of the station. Carlton groaned again, and followed him.

***

Shawn spent most of the first week after he and Jules broke up sulking around the Psych office, eating ice cream, and watching romcoms and also most of John Hughes’ high school oeuvre over and over. Gus stayed with him the first couple days, then disappeared, then reappeared and made him go home and shower and stuff. Shawn had to admit that he felt better once he was clean, and also in his apartment, which wasn’t the most adult place ever, but which did at least have a bed in it. The problem with his break-up coping strategies was that he and Jules had broken up at least partly because he was, well, kind of childish, and they were pretty childish strategies. They were also classics, though, so he didn’t feel _too_ bad about them.

That hadn’t been the only reason they’d called it quits, of course. He and Jules really liked each other, and sometimes they clicked and bounced ideas and jokes and things back and forth like crazy, but other times they completely failed to communicate, and they were both smart enough to figure out that this didn’t bode great for the future of their long-term, committed relationship. And speaking of committed, Shawn would have expected himself to be the main commitment-phobe, but they kind of took turns getting scared of commitment--like when his roofied self asked to move in, and it honestly freaked them _both_ out--until they realized they were in a sort of limbo. It was a nice limbo, but it wasn’t a place either of them wanted to stay forever. So they hung on anyway, and fought more and more frequently, and then spent a whole night talking about it, and broke up fairly amicably. And then Shawn cried in the Psych office for a week or whatever.

“Shawn,” said Gus, from the driver’s seat, “we’re at the crime scene.”

“Oh, right,” said Shawn. He’d worked a few cases with the SBPD since the break up, and he was mostly over re-hashing everything mentally every time he saw Jules, but apparently not _totally_ over it. “Let’s go blow some police minds.”

Lassie and Jules were already hunched over the body that had been pulled up onto the bank. Shawn and Gus ducked under the crime scene tape and eyed it, Gus mostly only using one eye. It was a sturdy-looking bald guy, maybe Latino, with some tattoos visible on his arms and neck that Shawn made sure to memorize. His shirt was plain white, and torn, missing a piece of cloth from one short sleeve.

“Did he drown?” said Gus.

“Maybe,” said Jules, and then used a gloved hand to tilt the guy’s head and expose an almost curved welt on his skull, behind his left ear. “Although this blow to the head had something to do with it, I bet.”

Lassie turned away from the body to cough, then turned back and said, “He can’t have been in the water for much over twenty-four hours, if at all. I bet he was dumped last night.”

Shawn looked up and down the creek bed. The nearest structures were mostly various warehouses and parking lots, and there was a strip of no-man’s land between most of them and the creek. There was thick vegetation along most of it. One spot on the opposite bank, several feet upstream, caught his attention--some of the bushes onshore had branches bent, and there was what looked like a strip of white fabric just visible, fluttering from a twig near the ground. “ _Woooah_ ,” he said quickly, his usual pre-vision exclamation, and threw a hand up to his head. “I can see where he went into the creek. There is a disturbance in the Force--I mean, nearby. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He set off quickly without actually looking back at the opposite bank. “Spencer!” started Lassie, from behind Shawn, but Shawn ignored him to jog through what turned out to mostly be brambles and then push around and through some bushes until he was directly across from the spot he’d, uh, spotted. Then he turned and waited for Gus, Jules, and Lassie, who arrived in that order. He’d known they’d follow.

“Behold!” said Shawn, and flung his arm out. The other three gathered around and put their heads near his to stare through the same hole in the vegetation that he was looking through. Shawn held his breath a little, both to avoid smelling Jules’s familiar scent from one side, and because Lassie was sniffling on his other side, and Shawn was pretty sure the guy had a cold. “On the other bank,” he said, when no one said anything. “That’s where he was dragged to the water.”

“There is a kind of path there,” said Jules. “Looks fresh--those vines would have turned brown by now, otherwise.”

“Is that a piece of his shirt?” said Lassie. Jules and Gus made recognizing noises. “All right,” he continued, “let’s finish up here and we’ll go see what we can pick up across the creek.” He hung back as the others turned to go, and blew his nose.

“Uh, Lassie, you’re still wearing your dead guy gloves,” said Gus.

“Oops,” said Lassie, tucking away his handkerchief and pulling off the rubber gloves. “These are contaminated, now.”

“I was more concerned with the dead guy contamination getting on your face,” said Gus, but Lassie just shrugged blankly. Then he stopped and looked faintly annoyed for a moment, and Shawn wondered if he was just registering what Gus had said.

“All right, Spencer,” said Lassie instead. “I guess this means you two dingbats are on the case.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK y'all, I don't actually hate the canon relationships. But also, I wanted to write this! So I did. I was going to put more thoughts in the notes, but I keep having trouble figuring out when to stop writing so...I'll leave you with that tidbit for now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual disclaimer that I don't live anywhere near Santa Barbara, so though Mission Creek is real, everything other bit of Santa Barbara geography in this fic, including the creek's immediate surroundings, is made up by ME. (imagine Shawn's voice on that ME as he pokes himself in the chest--you know the voice I mean)

By the time they made it back to the Crown Vic after checking out the dump site, Carlton admitted to himself that he probably had some sort of a cold. Luckily, though, his main symptoms seemed to be just feeling kind of gross and hot behind the eyes, nothing outwardly obvious, and he cleared his throat and successfully suppressed any more coughing as he slid behind the wheel. O’Hara glanced at him, then away and back at the ID in the evidence bag she was holding. “He lived about ten minutes from here,” she said, then read out the address.

Guster’s little blue car followed Carlton’s through the streets, which was to be expected, though Carlton didn’t try to make it easier for them. Spencer had probably “divined” the address, anyway, or just seen it when O’Hara had shown him the ID. The deceased was named Jorge Santana, which Spencer had insisted on pronouncing pretty much like “George,” except while making a weird face; he’d done that until Guster had slapped him upside the back of his head, anyway. Carlton fought down a smile, thinking of it.

O’Hara glanced at the car clock as Carlton drove, and then at her watch, as though he wouldn’t keep his car’s clock precise to the second. “What time are you leaving today?” she asked.

It was only about lunchtime, and Carlton was confused by the question. “Whenever we’re done for the day,” he said. “Depends how this case is going.”

“I was just wondering,” said O’Hara. “It’s Wednesday, I thought you might be leaving early to visit Marlowe, like you usually do.”

Carlton cleared his throat again, suddenly grateful for the excuse of a cold to do so. O’Hara looked over at him and pulled off her sunglasses so he could see her eyes, which he considered an unfair interrogation tactic. “We, uh. Marlowe and I are--taking a break.”

O’Hara somehow contrived to soften her already gently concerned look, and Carlton scowled harder to make up for this. “Oh, Carlton, I’m sorry. Is it, um...how similar is this ‘break’ to your separation from your ex-wife?”

“Yeah, OK, I guess we broke up,” said Carlton, getting the point. “She, uh, met someone.”

“Oh!” said O’Hara, looking considering. “In the...women’s prison?”

“Yeah,” muttered Carlton, paying very close attention to the road. Marlowe had been gentle when she’d broken up with him across a visiting room table, a couple weeks ago now. He’d had to admit she had a point; they’d known each other for about two days before he’d had to arrest her, and even though they still got along well, it wasn’t like they were spending large amounts of time together or getting to know each other any better--unlike her and her cellmate, who now knew each other quite well, apparently. But he’d really liked her. Even if his _willingness_ to jump into a relationship had been maybe partially related to the reveal of Spencer and O’Hara’s own relationship shortly beforehand, he wouldn’t have _tried_ if he hadn’t really liked her. He’d even gone to visit a few times since the break up, though he didn’t actually think they were going to get back together. Marlowe was still a good listener. “Listen, O’Hara, do you mind just--not spreading it around, yet. I’m not--I’m fine. I just don’t feel like answering any questions. Or talking about it. Or talking at all.”

“That’s OK, partner,” said O’Hara. “I’ll keep it quiet. You’ll have to let people know eventually, though.”

Carlton shrugged.

Jorge Santana had been married, which Carlton and O’Hara found out when his wife opened the door to his house and said, “Yes, I’m his wife,” when they asked her if she knew him. Carlton’s nose was about to start dripping, so he took a step back and blew it and let O’Hara do the work of letting Mrs. Santana know her husband was dead. He probably would have done that anyway, because she was better than him at interacting with people. Spencer and Guster arrived at the house around that time, and they stood off the porch and looked appropriately solemn, while whisper-arguing about something out of the corners of their mouths. Then they trailed the detectives inside.

In the house, O’Hara and Carlton sat stiffly on a couch, Mrs. Santana went to an armchair, and Guster took the other chair. Spencer prowled around the living room picking up framed photographs and putting them back down crookedly. “I don’t know who would have wanted to hurt Jorge,” Mrs. Santana said tearfully. “He was a good man. Worked for my brother, at his shipping company--SanRam Shipping. We were never rich, but we had enough.”

“Can you think of anything from his past, maybe?” said Guster. “Anything he used to be involved with that would have come back to bite him now?”

Carlton glowered at Guster for asking a question, but Mrs. Santana was nodding reluctantly. “When I first met him--this was years ago, we were teenagers--he was in a gang,” she said. “You have to understand, we grew up in a bad neighborhood--you _had_ to join a gang, or get out. But he got out so long ago--my brother helped him do it--and he’s been a model citizen since then, I swear.”

Spencer inhaled sharply from behind the couch, and Carlton and O’Hara had to turn to be able to see him swing his finger up to his eyebrow in that annoyingly familiar gesture. “I’m sensing that’s not quite true, Mrs. Santana,” he said. “He started bringing home more money recently, didn’t he? Something a little extra? More than he could have made at his shipping company job.”

Carlton and O’Hara swung back towards Mrs. Santana, who started crying harder and also clutching at her necklace, which, now that Carlton got a good look at it, looked pretty expensive. “It’s true,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell me anything about it, but he started bringing home almost twice as much money these last two weeks. He said it was a one-time deal, too good to pass up, and when it was done we could do whatever we wanted--move away, start a family, anything.”

“He didn’t tell you _anything_?” pressed O’Hara gently, but Mrs. Santana just shook her head and cried harder.

“He said he didn’t want me to be in any danger.”

***

Shawn and Gus were a little late to the coroner’s lab, because Shawn convinced Gus to stop for food first. “I don’t want to eat right before watching Woody cut open a dead guy,” Gus argued.

“You won’t want to eat _afterward_ ,” Shawn pointed out, and Gus shrugged and said, “True, that.”

“Right on time,” said Woody when they banged through the doors. The body, luckily for Gus’s hastily scarfed lunch, was under a sheet. “I was just giving the detectives here a run-down on our victim’s injuries.”

“Woody, you were describing the things you and your ex-wife used to watch to relax,” said Jules, with her nose wrinkled, “even though we kept asking you to stop.”

“Oh, right,” said Woody. “Ooh, did I tell you about the video where the cat--”

“Enough!” said Lassie, screwing his eyes shut. “Tell us about the body.”

“Right,” said Woody. He pulled down the sheet a little and pointed out the bruise on the skull. “Hard blow from some kind of blunt instrument, held by a left handed man--or lady, don’t want to be discriminatory. Probably not a child, though, they wouldn’t have been tall enough. No water in his lungs--he was dead when he went in the creek. From the work I’ve done so far, I think it’s pretty clear what killed him.”

Gus nodded, and said, “The blow to the--”

“He froze to death,” said Woody.

“Woody, it’s April,” said Jules.

“I know,” said Woody, “but all the signs point to him dying of hypothermia, so he must have been dumped in Antarctica until he died, and then flown back to Santa Barbara in a high-speed plane, because I’m putting his time of death sometime yesterday afternoon, although the whole freezing thing makes it a _little_ difficult to pinpoint.”

“ _Or_ ,” said Shawn slowly, “he could have been stuck in an industrial freezer of some sort. A walk in.”

“Like in a restaurant,” said Gus.

“Or on a refrigerator truck,” said Shawn.

“The shipping company!” said Jules. “We need to talk to Mrs. Santana’s brother.”

Shawn glanced at Lassie, who’d been looking back and forth between everyone while they talked, as though he wasn’t quite keeping up with the conversation. Now he was staring at Jules, his eyes slightly glassy. “Uh, Jules, did you two have lunch yet?” said Shawn.

She glanced at Lassie, too. He shook himself a little and frowned at her, almost like normal, but Shawn saw the concern flit across his ex-girlfriend’s face before she tucked it away quickly. “Good point,” she said. “Come on, partner, let’s grab something to eat before we look up this guy’s office.”

Lassie grumbled something about not being hungry, but trailed Jules obediently out of the room. Shawn frowned a little himself as they went. “So, do you have another lead in mind?” said Gus under his breath, as he and Shawn followed the SBPD detectives out. “Something we can do to get ahead of the police?”

“No,” said Shawn. Gus made an annoyed noise. “But actually, I think we can probably steal this one--hey, Lassie, Jules!” Both detectives stopped and swung around in the hallway, and Shawn took a couple running steps to catch up to them. “Hey, why don’t you two take your time with your lunch,” he said, eyeing Lassie, who had taken advantage of the pause to blow his nose again. “And you can do some searching, see if _Jorge_ \--” after Gus’s slap earlier, he emphasized the correct pronunciation in a way that was probably a little racist “--had an arrest record from his youthful gang banger days. Gus and I can go check up on the brother-in-law.”

“Listen, Spencer--” said Lassie, so Shawn cut him off.

“Woah, I’m getting something, something hot,” he said, and groped at Lassie’s face. “It’s you, Lassie, you’re hot, do you have a fever?” He’d meant to say it no matter what, just to draw attention to Lassie’s obvious cold, but the guy did actually feel a little warm. “Seriously, man, you feeling OK?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” said Lassie, smacking down Shawn’s hands and then Jules’s, too, when she reached for his forehead. She got a good grope in first, though, and nodded to Shawn from behind Lassie’s shoulder. “I’m a grown man and Head Detective of the SBPD, I think I can make my own health decisions.”

“Look, Carlton, just let them do this while we search online,” said Jules. “It’ll _save_ time in the long run. And you can take something with lunch.”

“ _Take_ something--” Lassie sputtered.

“Ibuprofen, or acetaminophen,” Gus offered helpfully. “They’re both fever reducers.”

“Plus you have a headache,” said Shawn. Lassie gave him an ironic look and started to say something scathing about psychic powers, so Shawn added, “You’ve been flinching at loud noises, and at that one light in the autopsy room that flickers constantly. Just take a painkiller.”

Lassie huffed, which made him cough, which seemed to make him accept his fate. “Fine,” he said. “Then you come straight back to the station.”

“Always do,” said Shawn, and let him and Jules get a few steps ahead again.

“We _never_ come straight back to the station,” said Gus, to Shawn only.

“You know that’s right,” said Shawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As happens too often in the show, Marlowe does not appear in this fic except through mention, hence the lack of tag. Honestly, I think she's a pretty baller character. But you have to admit that no matter what reason you give for it (caught up over Jules, caught up over Shawn, just plain lonely b/c his BFF is in a relationship) Lassie jumps into his own relationship _real quick_ once he realizes Shawn and Jules are together.


	3. Chapter 3

Shawn and Gus left Lassie and Jules typing away in the bullpen. They took with them a name--Carlos Ramirez--and an address for SanRam Shipping, which led them to a small office building surrounded by fleets of 18-wheelers, near the area where Jorge Santana had been dumped. “Hey,” said Shawn as soon as they got into the small reception area, “is Carlos around?”

“He’s in his office,” said the man at the front desk, who looked about twenty. “Can I help you?”

“We’re just here to talk to him about his brother-in-law, Jorge Santana?” said Gus, annoyingly, because Shawn would have come up with a better cover story than that.

Or maybe they didn’t need a better cover story. “Oh, poor Jorge, yeah, I heard about that,” said the guy, waving towards a door. “Go ahead back, he’s in there with Clyde Adams but they should be finishing up right about now.”

Clyde Adams turned out to be a greasy-looking white dude in coveralls with the logo “SCS” on the chest, and with ink stains on the side of his hand, who was just standing up as Gus and Shawn pushed the office door open. “You’re not getting his cut, either,” said Clyde. “Do we have an agreement?”

“Of course,” said Carlos Ramirez, standing up, too, and shaking Clyde’s hand. “Thanks, Clyde. Can I help you gentlemen?”

Clyde glared at Shawn and Gus indiscriminately as he pushed past them and left. Unless it counted as discriminately when anyone glared at Gus, since he was Black. Something to ask him later. “Hi,” said Shawn, “Shawn Spencer, psychic detective with the SBPD. This is my partner, Cold Cutz. Cutz is with a Z.” Next to him, Gus nodded and drew a Z in the air with his finger. “We have a few questions about your brother-in-law, Jorge Santana.”

“Poor Jorge,” said Carlos, unknowingly echoing his receptionist. “Of course, take a seat, Mr. Spencer and Mr., uh, Cutz. I’ll help however I can.”

“When was the last time you saw Jorge?” said Gus.

“Yesterday, when he came to work,” said Carlos. “He left this building around lunchtime, but that was pretty normal--he was checking out warehouses, potential clients. We provide the trucking services, but that’s it; what we carry, where it comes from, or where it goes is up to the people who hire me. But we like to check out the places that we can, to make sure it’ll be safe for our truckers to load and unload and things like that.”

Shawn glanced around the office as Carlos spoke, searching for clues. There wasn’t much. A metal rack of file folders on the desk showed that the “SCS” on Clyde Adam’s coveralls probably stood for “Sandbar Cold Storage,” which was the label on one of the thickest folders there and also the only one that fit the initials. He scanned Carlos himself, instead, and then frowned slightly and did so again, more slowly. Carlos had been in a few of the photos in Mrs. Santana’s living room, and something was off about him. Shawn zeroed in on a lighter patch of skin on the guy’s neck. It looked like neatly applied concealer, and matched the corner of a tattoo that had been just visible in one group photo. So he hadn’t had the tattoo removed, but he _was_ hiding it.

“Mr. Ramirez,” said Shawn. “Can I call you Carlos? You and Jorge--your sister said you got him out of a gang, back when you were younger. Is there any chance he could have gotten mixed up in that again?”

“I don’t know how,” said Carlos, looking thoughtful. “I was never in the gang with him, I just gave him money and a job to help him get out of that neighborhood, so I wouldn’t recognize...but no, not Jorge. He would never go back to that.”

“She _also_ said that he’d started bringing home extra money, and he wouldn’t tell her from where,” Gus said.

Carlos looked sad, and shook his head. “Oh, Jorge--but I’m sure it wasn’t anything nefarious.” Shawn glanced at Gus, who mouthed, “bad.” “Whatever happened to him that he ended up dead,” Carlos went on, “he must have just been at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“All the trucks out back, they’re yours?” said Shawn, changing the subject.

“Yes--it’s not all of our trucks, but everything parked here is ours,” said Carlos, looking startled and a little confused.

“For my psychic senses to work, I need to be close to things that Jorge might have touched,” explained Shawn, “and walking around the office and the trucks might be a good start. For example, by sitting in this chair, I can tell that the guy who was just in here--Clyde Adams?--might have been making an agreement with you when, uh, Mr. Cutz and I walked in, but you’ve already had dealings with his company in the past, too.”

“That’s true,” said Carlos, looking faintly impressed, and not noticing Shawn glancing at the very thick “Sandbar Cold Storage” file folder again. “Clyde was one of my first business partners, actually. Feel free to walk around, gentleman, and let me know if I can help further. Jorge--I grew up with Jorge. He’s like my brother. If I can do anything to help catch the son of a bitch who killed him…”

He sounded sincere. “We’ll let you know,” said Shawn.

***

The fact that taking two ibuprofen with lunch had not only made Carlton’s headache go away for a little while but had also made him feel less fuzzy around the edges in general probably meant that O’Hara and Spencer were right, and he did have a fever. On the other hand, the medicine was working, so it wasn’t like he needed to acknowledge it now.

“There they are,” said O’Hara from her desk, looking over at where Spencer and Guster had just come into view, finally. They’d been gone long enough that Carlton and O’Hara had had time to search for arrest records for both Jorge Santana and Carlos Ramirez, print everything relevant, and then work on some other overdue paperwork. And eat a late lunch in between all of that.

Of course, rather than come straight over and report to the detectives who’d been waiting for them, Spencer and Guster waylaid McNab instead, close enough to be in Carlton’s earshot. “Buzz!” said Spencer. “You’re looking overly tired, though as cheerful as ever.”

“Hey, guys,” said McNab. “It’s this new drug that’s been hitting the streets these past couple weeks, it’s making patrols way more eventful than normal. It seems like it’s sold as cocaine, but it’s actually cut with a whole lot of low quality stuff, and people are really getting hurt when they take it, there’s been a lot of ODs and crazy stunts lately. We still don’t know where it’s coming from.”

“Their own fault for doing cocaine,” muttered Carlton from his desk.

“Some of them are just kids, detective,” said McNab reproachfully, managing to make Carlton feel even worse.

“Well, it’s the dealers’ fault more,” he allowed.

“Good luck, buddy,” said Spencer, reaching up to clap McNab on his shoulder. “We’re all rooting for you.”

“Uh, thanks?” said McNab as Spencer and Guster swept past him and hovered around O’Hara’s desk.

Carlton got up and came over so they could all go over things together. “I don’t think Carlos is our guy,” said Spencer as soon as they were all close enough to each other. “He was giving out some pretty serious vibes about being truly sad that Jorge is dead.”

“And we got to walk around and check out most of their trucks,” said Guster, “and Shawn didn’t, uh, get any vibes about someone being locked in one.”

“To be fair, the spirits didn’t say that someone _wasn’t_ locked in one,” said Spencer, “they were just--pretty quiet, but I think they would have let me know.”

“Well, Carlos Ramirez doesn’t even have a record,” said O’Hara, opening the folder for the case and pulling out the things they’d printed.

“Makes sense, he told us that he never actually joined a gang the way Jorge did,” said Guster.

“Jorge Santana _does_ have a record,” O’Hara went on, “but not anything major. A few possession counts, and he was an accomplice in a mugging, but I looked up the case and he personally wasn’t armed, and was younger than everyone involved.”

“And this was all when he was nineteen or twenty,” Carlton added. “At least ten years ago. Doesn’t mean he’s innocent now, though.”

“He’s dead, Lassie,” said Guster.

“Well, yeah, someone is _more_ guilty than him,” said Carlton. “He could still have done something illegal.” O’Hara rolled her eyes for some reason, but she didn’t look annoyed, so that was fine.

Spencer was flipping through the mugshots that O’Hara had printed. “Cool,” he said, “so we still don’t know who did it, but we know one person it probably wasn’t. What next, we look up all the places in the city with a walk-in freezer?”

“All the ones within a certain radius of the dump site, maybe,” said O’Hara.

“Cool,” said Spencer again, and then laughed a little and said, “Literally. Gus and I will go back to the Psych office for now; I’m getting some psychic tingles, but I need time to make sense of them. And some corn chips. Call us if you figure anything out?”

“Will do,” said O’Hara, and it seemed like that was going to be it, but then Guster glanced at his watch as he and Spencer turned to go.

“Hey, Lassie, aren’t you going to be late to visit your lady friend?” he said.

Carlton had turned back towards his desk, but now he swung back and met three pairs of expectant eyes. Guster just looked friendly and helpful, which was annoying because Carlton really wanted to be mad at him but he had no reason to be. Spencer looked similar, but with something additional in his expression that Carlton couldn’t read. He avoided O’Hara’s eyes. He knew what she would be thinking.

It wouldn’t be that hard to say, “No, we broke up,” or even, “Not visiting today,” but Carlton suddenly found that the ibuprofen was wearing off, and he was tired and didn’t feel like dealing with any of it. “You’re right,” he said instead, and went to grab his jacket from his desk chair.

O’Hara kept giving him a look, but he kept avoiding meeting it. Guster said something like “You’re welcome,” and then he and Spencer disappeared. Carlton made sure his computer was off, and followed them.

Outside, he paused for a moment on the front steps, and blew his nose. Was he really leaving work early because he was _sick_? He told himself that, actually, he was leaving work early because he didn’t want to admit to anyone that he had broken up with his convict girlfriend. This didn’t turn out to feel any better.

Across the street, Spencer and Guster climbed into Guster’s blue car, and drove away. Several cruisers pulled up in front of the station, and disgorged uniformed officers and a few drug sniffing dogs. One of the officers laughed and called to another one who’d just climbed out of the car in front of him. “Get this!” he said, gesturing at the two leashed dogs with him. “Both of them went crazy at this one trucking lot, but then it turned out they were barking at one of the trucks a big shipment of raw meat was just delivered in! It was a waste of time, but pretty hilarious.”

Carlton frowned at them, tucking away his handkerchief, and thought sternly that wastes of time were _not_ hilarious. He was also trying to think something else, but the full idea wouldn’t emerge yet. So instead he pulled out his keys and went to get in his own car. Maybe if he took ibuprofen again before going to bed, he’d sleep better that night and be fully recovered in the morning.


	4. Chapter 4

Shawn knew he was missing something. It was frustrating. He spent the late afternoon poking around online. He found staff photos of the folks from SanRam Shipping; Carlos’s neck was bare and apparently tattoo-free in all of the photos, which probably meant something, but he didn’t know what. And there were _so many_ buildings near the creek with freezer capabilities. Shawn scrolled through search results showing the outsides of restaurants, a cafeteria in a school, and the outsides of two warehouses meant to hold cold or frozen items. He looked up what kinds of things would be stored in a cold storage warehouse. The photos of the ones that stored dairy were kind of amusing just because of the sheer amount of cheese that was in them. The ones of a meat storage facility were a little creepy, full of large chunks of animal and wicked looking hooks.

Gus took Shawn out to dinner, which Shawn knew was a distraction technique since he was still halfway used to getting dinner with Jules when she was off duty, but he appreciated it anyway. “Lassie seemed kind of out of it today,” he said, unprompted, while they waited for their food.

“I guess,” said Gus. “He’s probably got that cold that was going around the station.”

Shawn hummed and tore up a paper napkin. Back before Jules--before Abigail--he’d definitely had something of a thing for Lassie. But, similarly to the struggles that he’d had first getting together with Jules, they’d never really been available at the same time. Or rather, Lassie had technically been available when Shawn was, at first--but he’d also, as far as Shawn could tell, been either uninterested or, more likely, deeply in denial. And then Shawn had Abigail and then Jules, and now Lassie had Marlowe.

But it was fine. Somehow, Shawn’s constant flirting hadn’t actually scared the guy off, and they’d developed a weird but solid friendship, nothing more or less. Except very occasionally; usually when Lassie was showing the odd glimpse of vulnerability. Like back when he’d moved into that creepy condo, and Shawn had tackled him to keep him from killing Gus with his sword, and Lassie’s small voice asking to be let up and his limp body under Shawn’s had made something clench in Shawn’s chest. And then minutes later, his disheveled and reluctant acceptance of Shawn’s cup of gazpacho had caused a very similar reaction, which Shawn had shoved way down deep and tried not to think about, except he _did_ think about it briefly, and what he thought was, “Damn, damn, damn, I’m supposed to be over him.”

“Shawn,” said Gus, “you might need a new napkin.”

“Oh, huh,” said Shawn. “I guess you’re right.”

***

Carlton didn’t feel better in the morning. He didn’t feel much worse, though, so it was what it was. He woke up earlier than normal, because his nose kept getting stuffed up and preventing him from breathing. Then, since he was awake, he got up and got dressed and did all the normal morning things like drink coffee. Then he left his condo, took the elevator down, and walked outside--and then a dog barked somewhere in the neighborhood, and he had an idea.

The officer the night before had said a drug-sniffing dog had been barking around a truck, one that had carried meat in it. Smuggling drugs into the city in hidden compartments in trucks was always a possibility, that’s why the dogs had been at a truck yard in the first place. Also, Jorge Santana had been connected to a shipping company. So what if his death was related to those dogs barking? Of course, Spencer had said that Carlos Ramirez, who actually owned the trucks at the shipping company, seemed clean, and much as he hated to admit it, Carlton generally trusted Spencer’s instincts. But maybe the truck _hadn’t_ been used for smuggling, or not directly; maybe it was the stuff _in_ the truck that was important. On a whim, he went all the way back up to his condo, fired up his laptop, and searched which warehouses in that area stored meat.

The closest one to Mission Creek was called “Sandbar Cold Storage.” The whole area was slightly closer to Carlton’s condo than to the station; he considered, then decided to swing by and check things out, just in case. He was playing on a series of hunches so tenuously connected that he felt almost like Spencer; it would be good to have a little more to go on before he brought anyone else in. Besides, O’Hara probably wouldn’t be at the station yet; it was early enough that the sun was still low on the horizon. He really hoped it wasn’t just the fever, pushing hot behind his eyes, that was helping him make these connections. Unless they turned out to be a crock of crap. Then he hoped it was just the fever making him mess up.

***

Shawn and Gus made a beeline for Jules’s and Lassie’s desks as soon as they walked into the station in the morning, and Gus nearly ran into Shawn when he checked sharply at the sight of Lassie’s empty desk chair. “Where is he?” he said.

“Maybe he’s in the bathroom,” said Gus.

“His computer isn’t even on,” said Shawn.

“Hey, guys,” said Jules, whose desk Shawn had stopped next to. “Yeah, Carlton isn’t in yet. I figured I’d give him a _little_ longer before I call; I think he’s got that cold that’s been going around, maybe he decided to sleep in a little.”

“ _Lassie_ , sleep in a little?” said Shawn.

“Well, I didn’t say he took a sick day,” said Jules. “ _That_ would just be crazy.”

Shawn tilted his head skeptically, still not fully convinced Lassie would just sleep past his alarm without letting someone know, and then there was a commotion from the front of the station, and Shawn and Gus both swung around to see what was happening.

It wasn’t Lassie arriving; instead, a couple patrol officers were escorting a swearing, struggling dude in handcuffs and a wifebeater towards the holding cells. Shawn kind of wished he knew more Spanish than the little he remembered from high school, just so he could tell what the dude was calling the officers.

“Oh, wow,” said Jules. Henry stood up and came to stand by them, nodding appreciatively. “That’s Juan Escobar,” Jules went on, “he’s supposed to be pretty high up in the Tres Cuadras gang. He’s been wanted for a long time.”

“Isn’t that a type of cake?” said Shawn, looking from Jules to his dad.

“That’s tres leches, Shawn,” said Gus.

“The Tres Cuadras gang is responsible for a lot of the drug trade in the southeast parts of Santa Barbara,” said Henry. “They’ve been around since before I was on the force. Rumor is that they’re related to this new wave of bad cocaine that’s been going around, but we can’t prove it at all. No idea how it’s getting into the city.”

Shawn looked back over at the guy as he was tugged out of sight, and focused on a tattoo visible on his shoulder. “A vision,” he said, clutching at his head, “I’m getting something about--this case? The drugs? Jorge Santana? Quick, Jules, I need a pen.”

Jules passed him a pen and a pad of paper--Shawn had been prepared to draw directly on Gus’s skin, but he supposed paper was a better bet, especially with what he was about to draw. He scrawled a triangular symbol that looked roughly like the tattoo that had been on Escobar’s shoulder, Santana’s forearm, and, according to the bit of it he’d seen in the family photos, Carlos Ramirez’s neck. “What does this symbol mean to you?”

“I’m not sure,” said Jules. Shawn made a frustrated noise.

“Wait,” said Henry, “I think it’s related to the Tres Cuadras. I booked a few of them, back in the day, and most of them had something like this tattooed on them somewhere. It was better drawn, though.”

Shawn ignored the slight to his drawing abilities and grabbed the folder of crime scene photos from Jorge Santana’s murder off of Jules’ desk. He flipped through them quickly before pulling one out and slapping it down. “There!” he said, pointing to the corpse’s arm.

Jules, Henry, and Gus all leaned in and then straightened back up, like they were doing some kind of synchronized routine. “That’s the same symbol,” said Jules. “ _That’s_ the gang Santana was in? That would have been good to know.”

“There’s more,” said Shawn, sticking his finger to his forehead again and screwing up his face. “It’s being revealed--Carlos Ramirez isn’t as good as he’d have us believe. He was in the same gang, too, once upon a time. He has the same tattoo, on his neck, but he hides it with concealer. And if he hid that, he might be hiding more.”

“If Santana was mixed up in something with his old gang, Ramirez could have been mixed up in it too,” Jules agreed.

“Or he could have wanted to stay out if it, and ended up killing Jorge to keep them free of whatever was going on,” said Gus.

“Either way,” said Jules, “we need to get over there to talk to him. When Carlton gets here, will you tell him where we’ve gone?” she shot to Henry, as she grabbed the case file and her blazer.

“Sure,” said Henry, looking weirdly un-urgent as he wandered back towards his desk. Especially in comparison to Jules, Gus, and Shawn, who rushed out of the station; not quite running, but definitely walking with purpose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then, commercial! Don't change your channel, _Psych_ will be right back!
> 
> Also: the "Tres Cuadras" gang is totally made up, I didn't want to try to use a real gang for this. Unless my limited google research is totally wrong, "tres cuadras" means something like "three blocks," as in three city blocks, suggesting they control a small area of the city, though obviously their drug trade extends outside that area. But unlike Shawn and Lassie, I took French in high school. I figured I probably put about as much work into creating this fictional gang as the Psych writers did when they made up "Cinco Reyes" (which I'm fairly certain is made up), so...but all that said, if my fake plot point gang seems offensive in any way, please let me know! No offense is intended to anyone, but I know offense can also be given unintentionally, and I'm happy to edit as needed.


	5. Chapter 5

“OK, so maybe he didn’t do it,” said Gus.

Shawn and Jules stood next to him and nodded. All three of them stood looking down at the corpse of Carlos Ramirez, which had just been pulled out of Mission Creek with a welt on its head. It was almost the same spot where Jorge Santana had been found. The first cops on the scene had called the station, and Henry had called Shawn while Jules was driving to SanRam Shipping.

Jules’s phone rang before she could go grab gloves and take a look at the body, and she took a few steps away to answer. Shawn took a couple steps closer and moved around the body slowly, not touching it, just looking. Carlos wasn’t bald like his brother-in-law, but his hair was cut very short, like Lassie’s weird military haircut a few years ago, and Shawn could see his scalp and also the shape of the bruise from whatever he’d been hit with. It was almost a familiar shape. Shawn felt like he’d seen something similar in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe even in the last twelve.

“Hey,” said Jules, coming back towards Shawn and Gus and holding her phone away from her face for a moment. “Has either of you heard anything from Carlton?”

“No,” said Shawn, glancing at Gus, who gave him a look conveying the sheer ridiculousness of the notion that Lassie would have chosen _him_ to text or call. “Why?”

“He still isn’t at work,” said Jules, “he hasn’t checked in, and he won’t answer his phone. Chief Vick called to see if we’d intercepted him on our way here.”

Shawn and Gus exchanged another look, and Shawn glanced at his watch. According to his own internal clock, they’d arrived at the station bright and early, but he was well aware that Lassie would normally consider this to be mid-morning, at the earliest. And not checking in was _really_ not like him.

“I’ll tell her to send a patrol car around to his house,” said Jules, also looking worried.

“That’s probably a good idea,” said Shawn. “Just in case.” He looked back at the body, and noticed something about the former Carlos Ramirez’s hands. “Gus,” he hissed, as Jules walked away again. “Look at his fingertips. What’s that look like?”

Gus made a face, but looked obediently. “Maybe--mild frostbite?” he said. “Do you think he was frozen, too?”

Shawn looked back at the curved, almost hook-shaped wound on Carlos’s head, and had a thought. Actually he had several. He crouched down and stared at Carlos’s body as he worked through them carefully. Several seemingly unconnected pieces had just joined up.

“Shawn,” said Jules, coming back over towards them.

“Shh,” said Gus, who was watching Shawn’s face carefully. “He’s having a vision.”

***

It was early, still earlier than Carlton usually got into work. He hadn’t expected there to be anyone at the cold storage warehouse that early in the morning, and the parking lot was indeed pretty deserted. He blew his nose, then got out of his car and walked over to the entrance. There was a little separate office, which was visibly empty and dark. The door to the warehouse proper was unlocked, which was useful. He snapped open his holster so that his gun was easily accessible, put one hand on it, and stepped cautiously inside.

“Can I help you?” said someone from behind him, and Carlton jumped and whirled around, only _not_ pulling his weapon because his instincts were a little dulled from the headache that was already starting up again in his sinuses.

“Uh, hi,” he said, reaching for his badge instead. “Carlton Lassiter, SBPD. I just need to take a quick look around, Mr., uh--” he glanced for the name on the man’s coveralls. “Adams.”

He expected the man to ask _why_ he needed to look around, and wasn’t sure exactly what he would say, but to his surprise, the guy smiled unctuously and said, “Of course, Officer. Call me Clyde.”

“Detective,” corrected Carlton, and then, because he couldn’t stop himself, “Head Detective, actually.”

“Impressive,” said Clyde. “Here, Head Detective, let me take you on a little tour.”

“It’s fine, I can just look around on my own,” said Carlton.

“Sure, sure,” said Clyde. “I’ll just kind of show you what everything is, and then you can look around for as long as you like.”

That...sounded pretty reasonable. “OK,” said Carlton, trying not to be obvious about how close he was keeping his hand to his gun.

The whole place was kind of creepy, and this was from the perspective of a man who enjoyed butchering and cooking large cuts of wild game. There wasn’t actually any meat visible in the warehouse at first glance; there were instead a few hallways, each of which had rows of metal doors opening off them.

“We keep some stuff at fridge temperatures, for local consumption, but we freeze a lot of it,” said Clyde, leading Carlton past some empty meathooks and down one of the hallways.

“Uh huh,” said Carlton, trying to avoid coughing. “Do you have any sort of contract with SanRam Shipping?”

“Never heard of them,” said Clyde.

“Do you know Jorge Santana?” tried Carlton.

“No, should I?” said Clyde. “Here,” he went on, tugging on a handle next to a display that said “3 deg F” on it. There was something different about the door, but Carlton couldn’t figure out what before Clyde swung it open, hiding the front of it. “Here’s what the typical inside of one of our freezers looks like.”

It was full of frozen, disemboweled pigs hanging from hooks. Carlton eyed them. “OK.”

“It’s called a walk-in for a reason,” said Clyde, grinning and gesturing. “Go ahead, Officer--sorry, Detective. You wanted to look around, right?”

Carlton openly put a hand on his gun, and kept an eye on Clyde as he walked up next to him. Clyde nodded encouragingly. Reluctantly, Carlton looked away from him and at the freezer contents. “Looks like meat,” he said, and took a step inside.

As soon as he did, he knew what had been different about the freezer door. It had a lock on it. By the time he knew _that_ , though, Clyde had shoved him hard between the shoulder blades and sent him stumbling against the closest frozen pig. Carlton pulled out his gun and spun around, but Clyde had already swung the door closed. Carlton shot at it, which was dumb, and then got a running start and slammed his shoulder into the door, which moved it slightly, but he could hear the clink of the lock taking up the strain. He growled and slammed into it again.

“Sorry, Head Detective,” came Clyde’s voice, faintly. He seemed to be yelling right at the crack of the doorway. “I would have knocked you out, like the others, but I didn’t want you getting any ideas and pulling that gun on me. Still, at least you still have it. If freezing to death takes too long for you, you could always shoot yourself.”

Carlton yelled wordlessly, took two steps back, and fired his gun at the area where he knew the lock was. He managed to stop himself before he emptied the clip, just in case. The bullets went part of the way into the door and wall, but they didn’t even penetrate fully. The lock, when he slammed against the door again, was still there.

Carlton’s phone had no service. He put it back in his pocket, with hands that were already starting to shake a little, and considered. He wondered what Adams had meant by “others,” plural. He wondered how long it would take to freeze to death. He wondered if Shawn would find him before that. He was not an optimistic person by nature. He’d been called “cynical” before. And, all right, he _did_ like to prepare for the worst possible scenario. But for some reason, despite almost all of his instincts, which were saying, “You’re going to die here,” Carlton couldn’t quite convince himself that Shawn _wouldn’t_ find him first. In the cold room, as he started to shiver, and watched his breath condense in the air, it felt like a welcome kernel of warmth.


	6. Chapter 6

**1982**

Carlton stumbled a little, and opened his eyes. He seemed to have just walked about a block with his eyes closed, unintentionally. He was getting tired. He’d managed to hitchhike over halfway to Old Sonora so far, picking up a single ride from a sketchy guy who was willing to take an obvious kid along for several miles, but who wasn’t willing to go out of his way to get that kid to where he was going. He’d dropped Carlton in a residential neighborhood and given him sketchy directions before zooming away. Maybe he should have found someone less sketchy.

Now Carlton had been walking for what felt like hours. The low clouds earlier had given way to some very rare snow, which had been falling steadily for at least half of those hours. His legs were soaked up to the knee, but at least his feet, heavy in sodden sneakers, didn’t hurt any more. This was because they were numb, but Carlton decided to count it as a plus.

He’d come too far to turn back, at this point. Now his only hope was to keep walking, hopefully find another ride, and finish the trek to Old Sonora. It was getting dark, and there weren’t many cars around, probably because it was a few days before Christmas and everyone was inside with their families. The lit windows and Christmas lights shone cheerily through the falling snow; Carlton would have stopped to admire a house or two, except that he was very aware that if he stopped walking, he wouldn’t really be able to start again, so he pulled the track jacket that was his sole additional layer closer to his body, crossed his arms, and trudged on.

His eyes closed again, and he forced them open and stared ahead. The next yard had candy cane decorations. He would make it a goal to reach them. They seemed to be very far away. He focused on the candy canes until they were next to him. One more yard down. The next yard was undecorated, but the one after that had several large, tacky plastic decorations, like a Santa and a giant snow globe.

Carlton focused on the snow globe. It seemed to hang in front of him even as he could have sworn he was moving forward. He kept focusing on it. Now it was closer, but getting harder to reach. He realized that he had fallen to his hands and knees. It had been hard to notice, because both his knees and his hands were numb. He crawled towards the snowglobe. Once he was next to it, his limbs stopped responding to conscious commands, and he had just enough strength left to make sure he rolled to his back when he collapsed.

Carlton lay on the ground next to the snow globe and watched the snow fall. He was now almost entirely numb, though still quite cold, but he could feel the flakes where they landed on his face, little pinpricks of iciness. Maybe he was in the snow globe. Maybe it was fake snow. It certainly seemed to be coming from every direction. Was it cold anymore, or was it burning? He couldn’t tell. Maybe both. If he was in the snow globe, Mother wouldn’t be able to find him. Good. But neither would Hank. Less good. His eyelids drooped and fell closed.

Distantly, Carlton heard a scream, and then there were warm--hot--hands on him, moving his body around, sitting him up. He groaned in protest. “How the hell did you end up in our yard, son?” someone was saying.

Someone else, someone feminine, seemed to be panicking slightly, saying, “Who is he? What do we do? We should call someone--oh, his poor mother!”

He didn’t want them to call Mother. With a supreme effort, Carlton forced his eyes open again and mumbled. “What was that, son?” said the man.

“Hank Mendel,” said Carlton, through lips that refused to move quickly enough. “Call Hank. Old Sonora.”

**Present day**

“ _That_ was a doozy of a vision,” said Shawn, straightening up quickly. He glanced up and down the creek, then ran back to Jules’ patrol car, opened the door, and climbed up to stand on the passenger seat, leaning out, so he could see the buildings on the other side of the creek. A few warehouse roofs came into view--Shawn strained until he could see signs.

“There!” he called, letting go of the car with one hand, to point, and almost falling off the seat. “I know who did it. And where he is. It’s a, oh, he’s like a highwayman--”

“Highway? Like from _Heartbreak Ridge_?” said Jules. She and Gus had followed him attentively.

“No,” said Shawn, “and that was an incredibly Lassiterian reference. No, I’m thinking of famous highwaymen--and women--not Bonnie--so it must be Clyde! His name is Clyde, uh, Munster. No, Adams.” He thought back to the ink smudges on Clyde’s hand when they’d briefly met--on the _side_ of his _left_ hand, because he wrote with it, and also did other things with it, like smashing people over the head. “He works for--maybe runs--that warehouse, Sandbar Cold Storage,” he continued, still pointing at the logo across the creek that said “SCS.” “They had a contract with SanRam Shipping. But something went wrong.” He paused for a moment, thinking, then shrugged. “It’s probably related to the drug thing, ‘cause of the gang connection. But the spirits were a little fuzzy on that point. Anyway, Jorge and Carlos were both in on it--” he recalled Clyde standing in the shipping office and saying “You’re not getting his cut.” “But Jorge didn’t like something about the deal. He went to the warehouse and argued with Clyde. He hit him over the head and threw him in a walk-in freezer until he died of hypothermia.” He gestured wildly, miming hitting someone over the head, and almost fell again.

“Shawn, get down,” said Gus, and pulled him down to the ground carefully.

“Thanks, buddy,” said Shawn. “After we went around asking questions, Carlos must have realized who killed his bro.”

“In-law,” said Jules.

“They were bros in heart, too, Jules,” said Shawn. “Carlos basically told us so.” Gus tilted a hand back and forth, but nodded. “Carlos went to confront Clyde, who hit him, too, with a meathook.” The curved wound on Carlos’s head was the same shape and size as some of the meathooks Shawn had seen in photos online the night before. “He figured that it worked once, so he did it again--stuck him in a freezer until he died of hypothermia, then dumped the body in the creek.” Shawn paused and thought for a moment. “He should have waited longer,” he added, “we just talked to Carlos yesterday, so we know about when he died. If he preserved him in the freezer for longer, he could have thrown all our timelines off.”

“Are you seriously wishing our killer tricked us better?” said Jules.

“I’m not _wishing_ it,” said Shawn. “I’m just saying. I wasn’t going to tell _him_.”

“If it _is_ drug related, I don’t know how,” said Jules slowly. “We’ve had drug sniffing dogs out checking all kinds of transport these last few days. Wait…” She looked up. “One of the units came in yesterday after you both left. They said that their dogs had been barking at a truck, but they thought it was just because it was a refrigerator truck that usually carries raw meat.”

“Did Lassie hear that?” said Shawn sharply.

“He left right behind you two, but he might have heard them on his way out,” said Jules slowly. “He wouldn’t go try to bust a drug-smuggling operation all by himself, though.”

“Normally, I’d agree with you,” said Shawn, “but he’s been a little out of it lately. Either way, Sandbar Cold Storage is a meat storage warehouse, and I think we should go there _right now_.”

***

Carlton was officially late for work. He stumbled a little in his pacing, and tore his eyes open. He felt and shook off a weird wave of deja vu. He’d certainly never been trapped in a meat locker before.

He’d taken up pacing the walls of the freezer, figuring that the movement would keep him warm. It was at least something to do other than disassemble and reassemble his gun--he’d done that once, and then realized that he wanted it ready to shoot in case Adams changed his mind and opened the door. Also his fingers had been getting too numb to do it again. It was also probably better than running shoulder first into the door, which he’d tried a few times more after finding that he had no phone service. The good thing about the cold was that he couldn’t really feel the low throbbing in his shoulder any more. He’d tried tap-dancing, too, but his feet had soon grown too clumsy for any quick movements.

Just in case he died, Carlton thought as he paced, it was probably a good thing that he’d broken up with Marlowe. Or her with him. Being in prison _and_ having a dead boyfriend was probably a real downer. Thinking of relationships and break-ups inevitably turned his thoughts to Spencer, and not just because he and O’Hara had just broken up. Once Marlowe had broken the news that she wanted to stop seeing Carlton, and in fact to start seeing one of her fellow inmates, and once she’d assured Carlton that she still thought of him as a friend and always would, she had also gently pointed out that every time he visited and they talked, approximately half of his conversation revolved around Spencer. Carlton, personally, hadn’t noticed. But he believed her.

He’d known for a long time that he was attracted to women and men, but when his own mother came out as a lesbian after a lifetime of very strict Catholicism, the resulting confusion and anger had made the younger Carlton vow to never be _gay_ or anything like that, at least not openly. He’d relaxed a little, as far as judging himself for his same-sex attractions, even as he worked his way through the ranks to Head Detective, but he never meant to _act_ on any of them. Anyway, he was married.

Then his marriage had collapsed, and Shawn Spencer had shown up. The physical attraction had been pretty much solidified the moment he’d had Spencer’s squirming body pressed between him and the police car door; the emotional attachment had taken longer, and had formed entirely without Carlton’s consent. He didn’t _do_ anything about it. Even if he wanted to date a man, he wouldn’t have known how to start. He went on other dates instead, and watched Spencer and O’Hara chase each other in circles; and then they’d settled down, and Carlton had quickly gone out and found Marlowe and done the same. Only now Spencer and O’Hara had broken up, and so had he and Marlowe, and Carlton was feeling more and more like he couldn’t _not_ try something, and also he was locked in a meat locker and hypothermic. He stumbled again.

This time his numb feet somehow tripped him enough that Carlton fell against one of the hanging pig carcasses, hands out. One of his hands went into the chest cavity of the pig, which would have been more gross if the pig itself wasn’t frozen, and if Carlton’s hand wasn’t well on its way there, but it was still gross in concept. He pulled it out quickly, and frowned at the piece of tape that came with it.

Carlton edged closer to the pig carcass, suppressed a shudder--well, an extra one, he was already shivering pretty hard--and pulled the slit to where its innards had been open as much as he could, which wasn’t much. It was enough, though. There were more scraps of packing tape, a little bit of white powder, which Carlton avoided touching, and even some extra plastic wrap still around the cavity. He let the pig go, wiped his hands on his pants, and retreated to a corner of the freezer where he gave up on pacing and just sat. The good news was, his half-baked theory on how drugs were being smuggled into the city was correct. The bad news was that he had no way to get this information to anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amusingly when I first wrote the chapter where Clyde Adams shows up, I knew he was the bad guy, but I just made up his name randomly. Which means that when Shawn "divines" his name in this chapter, that was me taking a name I'd already written and going "what puns and references can I make around this?" Writing is an interesting process.


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn’t snowing anymore. Had it been snowing? The last thing he could remember was either his mother slapping him across the face, or a greasy man in coveralls shoving him. Something didn’t add up. Carlton let his head droop to the side, where it ran into cold metal. He opened his eyes.

There were pigs in this snow globe. Only it wasn’t a snow globe, it was a walk-in freezer. There was snow in the pigs, though, and Carlton wanted to laugh at the pun but his face wouldn’t really move enough to let him. He also wanted to move his arm to check the time, to see how long he’d been in the freezer, but actually, _all_ movement was difficult. The main problem was that, the way he was sitting--curled in a corner with his arms tucked into his chest and his knees up against them--was the warmest possible position, and any movement made him colder. Not that he was _warm_ , but he knew he could get even colder. After all, he was still conscious.

Carlton’s head started to slip forward, his eyes falling shut again, and he jerked it up with a huge effort, until the back of his head hit the wall behind him. He needed to stay awake. He had to tell someone...he was waiting...he was waiting for Sheriff Hank. No, he was waiting for Shawn. Who had, through a wild series of events, also been the Sheriff at Old Sonora briefly. He was...he wanted...he just needed out of this snow globe. No, it was a freezer. And he was here because…

Carlton’s mind slipped back and forth, past and present, until he found himself worrying about Lulu because she’d been crying when he ran away. He gritted his teeth and reminded himself that she was a full grown adult. He tried to distract himself by figuring out what offenses Adams had committed according to the California State Penal Codes, but that level of detail was beyond his frozen brain. His teeth weren’t chattering any more. That was probably a bad thing. It would be OK, though. Hank would come. No, Shawn. Shawn. Shawn would...break through the snow globe, he would…

Carlton’s chin slipped down to his chest again, and his eyes started to close.

***

As soon as Jules turned into the parking lot for the Sandbar Cold Storage warehouse, she said, “That’s Carlton’s car.”

Shawn had spotted it, too. It was his personal car, so it looked like he really hadn’t made it into the station. “Damn it, Lassie,” he said, opening his car door almost before Jules had parked. “Come on.”

“Shawn, wait,” said Jules, getting out, too, but staying right by her car. “If we’re right about this guy, and Carlton’s in there, we need to call for backup.”

“You can call,” said Shawn. Gus got out of the car and looked between the two of them, saying nothing. “But we don’t have time to _wait_ for them. Jules, we were thinking Lassie slept in, but if he didn’t, and he came here first, he could have been in there for hours already. And you know Clyde doesn’t just have him tied up in an office somewhere. He must be in one of the freezers.”

Jules shook her head, grabbed her radio, and called for backup. Then she closed her car door and stood there, hesitating. Shawn looked helplessly at Gus.

“I’m no expert,” said Gus, “but at the temperatures that frozen meat is kept at, it’s a question of hours before hypothermia sets in, not days. I’m not sure how long it would take to _kill_ someone, but…”

“But it took under a day for those other two,” said Shawn, hopping in place. “Come _on_ , Jules.”

“You two stay behind me,” said Jules, reaching back and pulling out her gun. “Let’s go.”

Shawn didn’t stay behind her. He did at first, because it made sense to have the person with the gun clear the entryway, but when Jules reluctantly admitted that she didn’t see anyone yet, Shawn pushed past her and scanned the rows of freezer doors, feeling like he was moving in slow motion. “Shawn,” Jules started to protest, but he ignored her.

“Nope,” he said after glancing down the hallway all the way to the right. He moved along, shook his head at the next two hallways, and then stopped at the one after them. Something was different. “Here,” he said, and started down it.

Jules said, “ _Shawn_ ,” again, exasperated, but she followed him, gun ready and eyes scanning. Gus caught up and pushed past Jules, too, probably because he now felt the safer spot was on this side of her. This worked for Shawn’s purposes, anyway.

“Here,” he said again, and stopped at the only freezer door with a lock on it. There was faint damage around the latch, almost as if it had been put under stress from the inside. In fact, there was a bump in the wall near it, poking out, as if--Shawn ran his fingers over it. “He shot at it,” he said. “He was conscious at some point--Gus, come here, quick, crack this lock.”

It was a combination lock, luckily. Gus bent to it and made weird noises and flexed all his fingers, in that way he did. Shawn pounded on the door. “Lassie, you in there?” he called. “We’re coming to get you, bud.”

“Shawn, shh,” said Jules, now nearby with her back to them, scanning the hallway. “We haven’t cleared the whole place.”

Shawn wanted to protest, but she was right. Besides, Gus was straightening up from beside the lock, looking proud of himself. “Got it,” he said. “Here.” He pulled the lock open and off the latch. Shawn grabbed the door handle and yanked it open.

At first all he saw was dead, frozen pigs, which gave him a moment of pause and made Gus recoil. But then the dark heap in the back corner of the silvery room resolved itself into Lassie, curled up and hunched over, with his gun on the ground next to him. Shawn went to him so quickly that he skidded when he dropped to his knees. “Hey,” he said. Lassie’s head was down; his eyes were closed, but moving around behind the lids. “Hey, Lassie, we’re here, come on man, we got you. I got you.” He reached out and put his hand on Lassie’s forehead, like he was checking him for fever. Lassie’s skin was almost cool to the touch, which would have been good if Shawn was actually worried about a fever, but which was not good right now. “He’s not shivering,” he said, letting Lassie’s head slump down again and scooching himself closer. It didn’t look like Lassie had any head wounds, at least, but--“Gus, he’s not shivering, is that a good thing?”

“Not really,” said Gus apologetically, standing over both of them. “He’s OK, though, Shawn, he’s still alive; we need to get him out of here and get him warm.”

“Yeah,” said Shawn distractedly. He pulled Lassie towards himself-- _he_ was starting to shiver, the damn freezer was cold even with Juliet holding the door open--and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Let’s get him out of here.”

Lassie’s cold head lolled sideways into Shawn’s neck when Shawn moved him. Then it rolled back the other way on its own. Shawn froze--figuratively--and looked down. Lassie’s eyes blinked open and stared blearily at Shawn’s face. One of his hands twitched, where it was resting against his own chest. “Hank?” said Lassie.

Shawn fought down a totally inappropriate wave of disappointment. Lassie was awake, it didn’t matter who he thought Shawn was. “No, buddy, it’s me,” he said. “You know, Spencer?”

“Shawn,” said Lassie. His hand twitched again, and he flopped it over until it was resting against Shawn’s chest instead of his own. “Y’r here.”

“Yeah, Lass, I’m here,” said Shawn. “Gus, help me out.”

Between the two of them, they heaved Lassie to his feet and draped his arms over their shoulders. Lassie seemed willing to help and also completely unable to. “M’gun,” he said, once Shawn and Gus had him braced between them.

Shawn rolled his eyes a little, but he was glad of the flash of Lassie’s normal priorities. “Hang on,” he said, tipped most of Lassie’s weight onto Gus, who protested and staggered, and picked up Lassie’s Glock. He checked that the safety was on, and considered. Normally, he would have stuck it in his waistband, but the metal was frigid against his hands, and he didn’t like the idea of putting it down his pants. He still preferred the idea of it being available to someone able to move their own hands, though, as opposed to Lassie, who was slumping further. Good thing he’d put a belt on that morning. He wedged it through his belt at the small of his back, _outside_ his jeans, and then grabbed Lassie’s arm again. “Let’s go,” he said.

He and Gus dragged Lassie into the hallway. Lassie mumbled something about snow. Jules looked relieved and shaky for a moment, then visibly pulled herself together and looked tough and confident again. She led the way back the way they’d came, gestured for them to wait, and ducked around the corner, gun in front of her. Shawn gave her a moment, then moved to follow, at which point Jules came back around the corner, walking backwards, with her hands up. Shawn had just enough time to exchange an “uh oh” look with Gus before the same greasy man in coveralls who they’d met in the SanRam Shipping office came around the corner after her, pointing his own gun right at her chest.

“Put your hands where I can see them,” said Clyde Adams.

Shawn glanced at Gus again, over Lassie’s drooping head, and said, “We’re just gonna let him down slowly. He can’t do anything.”

Clyde nodded sharply, so Gus and Shawn lowered Lassie and propped him against a closed freezer door. Shawn stayed down on his knees, and swiveled around to face Clyde, putting himself between the baddie and Lassie. Lassie slid sideways, since neither Shawn nor Gus was holding on to him, and ended up leaning on Shawn’s back. He still felt cold, even out of the freezer and through Shawn’s shirt, but Shawn’s priorities had realigned very quickly in the past thirty seconds. Getting Lassie out of there and warm was second on the list. First was keeping Clyde Adams from shooting them all before backup arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, gee, looks like another cliffhanger! (This would also definitely be a spot for a commercial, if this were a real episode.)


	8. Chapter 8

Everything hurt. His hands and face especially were jangling with pins and needles. Carlton gritted his teeth, and found that they were starting to chatter again, just faintly, which meant that he was getting warmer. He almost wished he wasn’t. At least when he was numb, nothing hurt.

Carlton’s brain was still fuzzy, and he forced himself to recap. Shawn had found him, and moved him around--Guster had helped--and then put him down out here in the warmer air that was helping him and hurting him at the same time. Now Shawn’s voice was vibrating against Carlton’s skull. He focused on it, using it to pull himself up into better awareness of his surroundings. “...had a gun, why did you hit them with a meathook and freeze them? Why not just shoot them?” Shawn was saying.

From beyond Shawn, a faintly familiar voice said, “Bullets are so _traceable_. And I own this gun legally, so there would have been a paper trail. After all, we don’t hire extra security, and I need to make sure no one will break into my warehouse. I’ve got to protect my meat products.”

Carlton thought of meat products, and remembered something. He tried to say it into the shirt over Shawn’s shoulder blades, but his mouth just moved without any words coming out. Shawn must have felt it, because he shifted, just slightly, enough to tilt an ear towards Carlton and for Carlton to pick his head up just a little and whisper, “Drugs. In the pigs. Smuggled ‘em in.”

The effort required to say that clearly was exhausting. He let his head drop again, and shivered against Shawn’s back. Shawn exclaimed something about being psychic, and then said, “I’ve already seen it all, Mr. Adams. Can I call you Gomez?”

“Shawn, that is a slight to the actual Addams family,” said Guster, somewhere nearby.

“Sorry, Gus, you’re right,” said Shawn. “Clyde, you and your _gang_ \--are you actually in Tres Cuadras, by the way, or do you just have connections? You’ve been smuggling drugs into the city in the cleaned out carcasses of animals meant for butchering. You knew the raw meat would throw off any drug sniffing dogs. I’d bet anything that it’s related to the new wave of badly cut coke on the streets right now--but, oh wait, I’m psychic, I don’t _have_ to bet because I _know_. What happened with Jorge and Carlos, huh? They were in on it, of course. Did they get too greedy? Want to keep some of the goods?”

“Shut up,” said Adams. “They had a stupid change of heart or something. _They_ were the ones who connected me to their old gang mates--I had the idea for a smuggling route, offered those two a big cut if they’d make the connection--but when they realized that it was all low quality shit and that people kept dying when they snorted it, _that’s_ when they wanted out. They wanted me to stop selling it! Like I even have a say in that; the Tres Cuadras are the ones who actually buy and sell. Jorge came and confronted me about it two days ago, threatened to rat us all out.”

“And then…” said Shawn, and went into more detail about how Adams had hit his business partners over the head and frozen them before dumping their bodies. Carlton knew some of that part first-hand, though this was the first time he’d heard about Ramirez being dead. He zoned out again. It was interesting that he’d told Shawn about the drugs, and Shawn had immediately claimed a psychic vision about them, but that was something to consider when his brain was working better. For right now…

Carlton found he could move his own arms, with more autonomy than he’d had before, although his whole body was now shaking so hard that _not_ moving was really more of an effort. He looked down and watched his hand lift from his lap as he reached for and grabbed Shawn’s belt. Then he realized what was next to his hand. He vaguely remembered asking someone to grab his gun, but he hadn’t realized until now where Shawn had put it.

“Shut _up_!” said Adams again, cutting Shawn off. “I guess if you know _that_ much, I really do need to kill you. Shame about all of your friends.”

“Hey now,” said Shawn, “are you sure you want to be hasty like this? You’re the one who said bullets are easy to trace.”

There was the faint wail of sirens. “Damn it,” said Adams. “Now I really have to shoot you, before they get in here.”

O’Hara and Guster spoke over each other to tell Adams why he really _didn’t_ want to shoot so many SBPD employees when a whole bunch more of them were about to arrive. Shawn straightened up further, almost like he was trying to shield Carlton with his body. Carlton thought fast. He was pretty sure there was something else he’d been meaning to tell Shawn, if he got out of the freezer alive. Something he wanted him to know. Something important--oh, right. He lifted his head. “Marlowe and I b-broke up,” he said near Shawn’s ear, and then slid his hand along Shawn’s belt and grabbed his gun.

***

Clyde Adams steeled his face, ignoring both Gus and Jules, and adjusted his grip on his gun. The shot left Shawn’s ears ringing. Then they cleared partially, and he realized that the reason it had been so loud was that Lassie had propped one arm over Shawn’s shoulder and fired _his_ gun, about a foot away from Shawn’s face. Clyde Adams was on the ground holding his knee, and Jules was already kicking his gun away and moving to handcuff him.

“I w-was aiming f-for his shoulder,” said Lassie sadly from somewhere near the back of Shawn’s neck. Shawn turned, and caught him as he started to slump further without the support of Shawn’s back.

“I think you did OK, under the circumstances,” said Shawn, taking the gun carefully from Lassie’s shaking hand and putting it on the floor. Lassie made a wry face and curled in on himself, tucking his hands inside his suit jacket.

“You know,” said Gus, from where he was standing on Lassie’s other side, “first aid for hypothermia is to remove wet clothes--I think we can skip that step since you weren’t immersed in water--and then to warm the victim up with blankets or body heat. I’ll go see if I can score an emergency blanket, but until then…”

Gus went to flag down an EMT, and Shawn grinned at his friend’s back--even if said friend had screamed like a little girl a second ago, when the gun had gone off--and lowered himself from his knees to sit next to Lassie, pulling him into a sideways hug. “C’mere, I’ll loan you some body heat.”

Lassie leaned into him willingly, his whole body shuddering. “Th-this p-part hurts,” he gasped.

“But you can still feel all your fingers and stuff, right?” said Shawn. He had a very sketchy idea of how long frostbite took to set in. “Here.” He reached into Lassie’s blazer, where Lassie had tucked his fists to the side, pinning them between their bodies, and then yelped and almost pulled away again. “Jesus, man, your hands are freaking ice cubes.”

“Sorry, they literally f-froze,” griped Lassie back. He pushed his face into Shawn’s neck. Shawn jumped a little and _almost_ said something about the crooked chip of ice that was Lassie’s nose, but then he didn’t. He moved his hand away from Lassie’s fists, and up to cup the side of his head. Lassie’s ears were really cold, too, but they didn’t feel like something to joke about. They just felt fragile.

“Hey,” said Jules, arriving in front of them and crouching down to their level. “Gus got sidetracked flirting with a pretty EMT, but I expect him to remember any second now and bring an emergency blanket over. Can you stand up, Carlton?”

Between the two of them, Shawn and Jules got Lassie upright. “O’Hara,” he said suddenly. His jaw clenched visibly, probably in an effort to stop his teeth chattering. It sort of worked. “In the f-freezer where I was--check those p-pigs. They’re some of the ones that, uh, S-spencer had a vision about.”

“Really?” said Jules sharply, looking between them. Shawn nodded, trying to look knowledgeable. “That’s great--I mean, that we have somewhere to start, it’s a big warehouse. I’ll get some forensics folks in there right away.”

Lassie leaned on Shawn as they headed for the exit, but seemed pretty OK to walk on his own. Shawn went with him, anyway, and thought about Lassie saying “Spencer had a vision.”

***

The EMTs were actually impressed by how low Carlton’s body temperature _wasn’t_ , after the amount of time he’d spent in the freezer. Shawn seemed to have nothing better to do than hang around the back of the ambulance where Carlton was perched, wrapped in an emergency blanket and still shivering; he spoke up at this point and said, “Didn’t you have a fever?”

“That could actually have acted in your favor in this situation,” said the EMT, nodding. “It would explain how you’re not unconscious right now, too.”

Neither O’Hara nor Chief Vick were particularly impressed at the thought of him feverish and also hypothermic, no matter how much the EMT said they cancelled out. And although he was feeling significantly better than he had been half an hour ago, Carlton’s nose was starting to drip again as his snot thawed, his extremities still felt like blocks of ice, and he kept being racked by sudden, overwhelming chills that tore through his body and made him shiver so hard that he almost fell over. So he didn’t argue too hard when the chief told him to go home.

He did argue a little when everyone refused to let him drive, but since he didn’t actually feel like bringing his hands out away from his body far enough to grip a steering wheel, they had a point. “I’ll drive you home,” said Shawn. “Jules brought me and Gus here, so that way we don’t have to figure out any car switching or anything. I can just drive yours.”

The chief told him to take a few days off--Carlton intended to ignore this instruction--O’Hara hugged him, rubbed his back, and said, “Never _ever_ do anything like this again without me, partner,” and then Carlton was sitting in his own passenger seat, the blanket still around his shoulders and under the seatbelt, and Shawn was adjusting his mirrors.

As soon as he was driving, Shawn reached for the radio, and Carlton stuck a hand out after all, to slap Shawn’s hand down and say, “Don’t mess with my presets.” He pressed the buttons himself, ignoring Shawn’s grin, and put on classical music because that was about what he could deal with at the moment.

To Carlton’s surprise, Shawn hummed along with the song, and then said, “I love Pachelbel's Shotgun.”

“It’s Pachelbel’s Canon,” said Carlton.

“I’ve heard it both ways,” said Shawn, of course, while Carlton realized that, joking aside, Shawn recognized and knew the name of a piece of classical music, which was startling. He had hidden depths. Possibly, Carlton thought, glancing at Shawn’s profile as he made a turn, he also had hidden depths related to his so-called psychicness, but that was a conversation for a time when Carlton wasn’t still thawing.

Shawn came with Carlton up to his condo, and didn’t look like he planned on leaving any time soon, which Carlton was quietly glad to see. “So,” said Shawn, looking around, “you and Marlowe, huh?”

Carlton tried to toe his shoes off--normally, he would have been _much_ more careful of the polish, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to use his fingers well enough to untie them--was hit with another juddering wave of cold, and almost fell over. Shawn caught him. “Can we,” Carlton said, leaning on Shawn and still working on his shoes, “talk about it later?”

“Sure,” said Shawn. His head was right next to Carlton’s. “In the meantime, if you need any more body heat, the loan offer still stands.”

“If it’s a loan, do I need to pay it back?” said Carlton.

“In installments, maybe,” said Shawn, smiling. “We can write up a contract.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so, although I do have a degree in biology, I'm not a doctor. (I _have_ been in a walk-in freezer, and had (mild) hypothermia, but not at the same time.) A fever is when your core body temperature is higher than normal, and hypothermia, symptoms aside, is actually what happens when your core body temperature is lowered, so I feel like the idea of them cancelling out to an extent (well, a fever making hypothermia take longer) isn't insane, but there's a reason I've been so vague about how long exactly Carlton spent in the freezer, so don't take medical advice from this fic, OK?
> 
> I like Pachelbel's Canon, too. It has no special Shassie relevance, it's just a nice piece of music.


	9. Chapter 9

Carlton was hot. He was _burning_. He shoved away everything constricting him and making him warm--it was an odd combination of blankets and someone else’s limbs--and fell off the couch.

“Careful--you OK?” said Shawn, who was still on the couch, pushing a tangle of blankets aside.

“I’m fine,” said Carlton, unconvincingly, his voice catching halfway through.

“OK,” said Shawn, also unconvincingly, swinging his legs down and then sliding all the way off the couch to kneel on the floor next to Carlton. “Can I hug you?”

All the heat from a moment ago had dissipated quickly, and Carlton was cold again, colder than he really should have been wearing a T-shirt and pajama pants in his condo in the middle of the day. He nodded, pulling up his knees and wrapping his arms around them. Shawn wrapped an arm around his back, settling next to him as though sitting on the floor between Carlton’s couch and coffee table was the most comfortable place he could possibly be. Carlton sniffled into his knees, mostly because his nose was still runny, and maybe a little because of annoying emotions, and leaned into Shawn.

“Did you have the snow globe dream?” said Shawn.

Carlton lifted his head and stared at him. He had fallen asleep more sure than he’d ever been that Shawn’s whole psychic schtick was a crock of crap, and now he suddenly wondered if he’d been wrong the whole time. “How’d you know?”

“You were just locked in a small, bare, frigid space for a few hours, I figured it was probably the closest thing to a snow globe that you can actually get,” said Shawn. “Plus, I overheard a psych eval years ago where you mentioned those dreams. That was how I knew what gifts to get everyone that Christmas, and how I knew you hated snow globes. Sorry about that, by the way. That was a pretty dick move. I didn’t hate you or anything, but you weren’t my _favorite_ detective at the time.”

“That was O’Hara,” said Carlton.

“Yeah,” said Shawn, and laughed a little, not like he was particularly amused. “Oh, well, times change.”

“I didn’t hate you, either,” said Carlton.

Shawn raised an eyebrow at him. “I mean, for that stunt, I might have deserved it a little.”

“You didn’t know--not everything,” said Carlton, and then surprised himself by going on, “When I was a kid--fourteen--I tried to hitchhike to Old Sonora. It was snowing.”

“I know--not everything, you’re right, but I know some stuff about that,” said Shawn, interrupting him. Carlton kept staring, and frowned a little. “When Gus and I were at Old Sonora that first night,” Shawn explained, “I kept pumping Hank for details about you as a kid. At one point--I think Gus had gone to pee or something--I said you’d probably been a goody-two-shoes, and he told me about you running away, trying to get yourself there, and almost dying of hypothermia.”

“I _was_ a goody-two-shoes,” said Carlton. “With Hank, anyway. Mostly with Mom, too. It was just--a hard time.”

“Well, like I said, I know the gist, so you don’t have to talk about it,” said Shawn. “If you don’t want to. You can, if you want.”

Carlton didn’t want to, not much. He tipped his head sideways onto Shawn’s shoulder, wondering if Shawn was always so warm, or if he was still mildly hypothermic. “There was a big snow globe,” he said drowsily. “In the yard where I passed out. One of those lawn displays. I thought I was in it.”

“Gotcha,” said Shawn. “I did wonder, a little, where the whole snow globe part of it came from.” Carlton hummed, feeling like he could possibly fall back asleep right there, and Shawn shifted a little. “Lassie,” he said, “much as I am enjoying this whole cuddling thing, we’re kinda on the floor, and also you’re kind of sweaty, either from the nightmare or the fever, which I don’t mind except I think the sweat is making you colder.” Carlton suppressed another shiver, and realized Shawn was right. “So maybe a shower is in order, before you fall asleep again,” said Shawn, giving him a little shake.

Carlton hummed again neutrally, but then straightened up and nodded. “Come with me?” he said.

Shawn gave him a look that carried a wide variety of emotions. Carlton couldn’t read them all, but he thought maybe there was some heat, and also some caution. “OK,” he said. “But if I do, we’re talking about you and Marlowe soon.”

***

They didn’t have any kind of conversation right away. When they’d first walked into his condo, Lassie had been about ready to crash, and he’d managed to stay awake only long enough to change and grab every blanket in his house before he and Shawn curled up on his couch, without really discussing it, and Shawn turned on a daytime telenovela. Lassie hadn’t even complained about the TV show choice; he’d been out almost before his head had landed on Shawn’s chest. Now, despite waking suddenly and violently about forty minutes into his nap, Lassie looked ready to fall back asleep pretty soon. Shawn hauled him into his own bedroom and then, through a series of maneuvers that could have been embarrassing if they were still dating other people and if Lassie had seemed to care at all, got them both naked and into the shower.

Lassie stood leaning on the wall, now looking slightly more alert. He inhaled steam, wiped a hand under his nose, and said, “Did you turn on the fan?”

Shawn grumbled, got water all over the bath mat as he stepped out and flipped the bathroom fan on, and then got back in the shower. Lassie grinned at him languidly, and he forgot why he was grumbling. “You and Marlowe broke up?” he prompted. Even a nicely-sized shower suddenly seemed small when there were two grown men standing in it.

“Yeah,” said Lassie, making haphazard moves to wash himself. “Two weeks ago, actually.” He paused and looked at Shawn, blinking water out of his eyes. “There isn’t much to talk about, really. It was--it’s hard to keep up a relationship with someone in prison. Plus she met someone.” Shawn raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. “Plus I like her but she was...kind of a rebound.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Shawn. He knew when Lassie had figured out his and Jules’ relationship, and he knew what he _wanted_ Lassie to be talking about, but for once the chance that he was drawing the wrong conclusion wasn’t worth the risk of blurting his deductions out loud. Even if his invited presence in Lassie’s shower was a pretty strong hint that he was right.

“Yeah,” said Lassie. “From someone who I wasn’t actually dating.” He was standing further under the spray than Shawn; he rinsed his hands, wiped his nose again, rinsed them again, and said, “I’m sick.”

“I don’t mind,” said Shawn, taking a step closer to him.

“I don’t want to get you sick,” said Lassie, putting his hands on Shawn’s shoulders.

“I _really_ don’t mind,” said Shawn, putting his hands on Lassie’s sides. “I’ll risk it,” he added, against Lassie’s mouth.

They didn’t have sex or anything. Shawn always thought shower sex was more work than it sounded like in, like, fanfiction or whatever, anyway. They _did_ kiss a little, Shawn holding Lassie up against the slick tile wall in a nice 180 from their normal wall interactions, and then they actually washed, Shawn using Lassie’s two-in-one body wash/shampoo on his hair. “Seriously, Lass?” he said. “I’m going to buy you some conditioner.” Then they got out to dry off, and Lassie started shivering again. Shawn ignored his growled warnings about hardwood floors to go dripping through his condo in search of more towels, and wrapped him up in at least three.

Both of them got dressed in Lassie’s bedroom, where the comforter was missing from his bed because it was balled up with a bunch of other blankets on the couch. Lassie sat down on his bed to pull on some socks, and then stayed sitting on it, blinking at the room. “Preposition for you,” said Shawn, pulling his phone out of his discarded jeans--he’d borrowed sweatpants, much more comfy for sitting around and getting warm.

“Proposition,” Lassie corrected.

“No, I get to go first,” said Shawn, willfully misunderstanding as usual. “You are tired, and hopefully interested in more cuddling. I am hungry, but also interested in more cuddling. I order food--or get Gus to bring something over--so that I can eat without sacrificing cuddling time.”

“OK,” said Lassie, putting up a hand and letting Shawn pull him up so they could go back to the couch. Shawn waited for more specific agreement, but none came.

“Are you OK with it if Gus brings something?” he said. “He wouldn’t have to stay, but that way I don’t need to pay a delivery driver.”

Lassie shrugged as they came into the living room, and then paused as he looked at the couch. If Shawn could read his expressions right, which he usually could, Lassie was realizing what Gus would probably figure out if he brought food to both Shawn and Lassie and saw the couch, the blankets, and what they were wearing. “That’s fine,” he said eventually, and slumped onto the couch, tugging fruitlessly at the tangle of blankets.

Shawn texted Gus and then sat next to Lassie, helping him disentangle blankets to drape over their laps, with an extra one to go around Lassie’s shoulders-- _Shawn_ wasn’t too cold. Lassie found the remote and flipped through things on the TV. “Hank came and got me,” he said, over the low volume of a mid-day cooking show. “When I was in the snow gl--in the yard, _with_ the snow globe.”

“Yeah?” said Shawn. He snuck an arm under the blankets to wrap it around Lassie’s waist.

“I was mad at my mother,” said Lassie. “For...anyway. I’ll tell you someday. That’s why I ran away, really.”

“I know the feeling,” said Shawn. “Opposite parent, of course.”

“Hank told me you can’t choose your family,” said Lassie. “You have to stick with them, because it’s your family.”

“Hmm,” said Shawn, watching the lady on the TV chop an onion. “What did he _do_ , after he said that?”

“Took me to Old Sonora and put me to bed,” said Lassie. “Why?”

“I dunno,” said Shawn, “he might have said that about choosing family, but it sure sounds like he _chose_ you. Binky.”

“I _will_ shoot you,” said Lassie mildly.

“Steady on, cowboy,” said Shawn, and grinned when Lassie smiled a little without looking at him. “What I’m saying is, people say all kinds of things. But what they _do_ is pretty important. I think that shows you how they really feel.”

Lassie looked at Shawn, and then craned his head as though trying to see the arm that Shawn had around him. Then he squirmed a little until he was groping at Shawn’s hand, on the other side of his waist. Shawn wiggled his fingers, and Lassie intertwined them with his own and held on, so that his arm and Shawn’s arm were making a loop around Lassie’s body. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe what people do _is_ important.”

Shawn grinned, pulled him closer, and kissed him on the cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, very sappily, is that! Now for the notes I couldn't fit on earlier chapters:
> 
> I have read fic with shower sex in it, and often enjoyed it and found it well-written, but I couldn't resist the meta dig, sorry if you've ever written that lol.
> 
> I have a lot of still half-formed headcanons about Carlton's childhood and his relationship with his mother/mom (also related to what he chooses to call her at any given time!) but I don't need to write all of them out here, lmk if you want me to attempt to put them in words though!
> 
> The title is pretty obviously related to, y'know, Lassie having a fever and also hypothermia in the same fic (wow, I am not nice to him, am I?) but it could also refer to:  
> 1) how the murder victims were killed because of backing out of a deal, getting "cold feet"  
> 2) the seasons-long dance Shawn and Lassie have been doing before this takes place. Look how literary I am!
> 
> My Shassie fic-writing has definitely slowed down some now (probably a good thing for my life overall) but I don't think this will be the last thing I ever post. Thank you to everyone who keeps reading/commenting/kudosing because it really does encourage me to keep posting! <3


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